


swimming lessons & big brothers

by cherubique



Series: amicitia - when everyone lives [3]
Category: Oxenfree (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherly Angst, Gen, Protective Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 10:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherubique/pseuds/cherubique
Summary: Alex asks Jonas to teach her how to swim, nearly a year after the trip out to Edward’s island. He agrees, although he’s still been struggling with the fact that Michael is back from the dead and has displaced him.





	swimming lessons & big brothers

“Teach me how to swim,” Alex grits out from between her teeth. Her brown eyes are sparkly with tears, shoulders shaking, hands wrapped tight around the straps of her backpack. The nails on both hands have been chewed down to almost the stinging quick. Jonas pauses, letting a sliver of a stream of smoke curl out of his mouth as he considers her. She’s trembling, lower lip wobbling, and her knees are nearly knocking together. He wants to fish out a bandage from his pocket that he knows he doesn’t have to wrap up around her nails.

It’s about a year going on, fast approaching the date that all of their calendars mark. Whether it’s to forget or remember differs, of course- but everyone remembers the early dew soaked morning that the ferry first set off. Jonas knows that it’s certainly something he’d never forget. 

For him, that date is marked off in cherry eyesore red on a kitten calendar that Alex bought him as a gag gift one time, so that he knows to clear his schedule to do nothing more than drink and chainsmoke to keep the ghosts at bay. The mint and menthol of his latest cigarette sours in his mouth, nicotine buzzing in his veins, frantic, almost too alive for his skin. The pack in his jacket pocket is already half empty. He hasn’t even gotten rid of the shiny plastic wrap yet, it’s crinkled up and wadded in beneath it.

Anxiety surges like the ocean surf and riptides that pulled her brother down beneath the surface, closing over like a lattice net of hands in children’s games, forcing him under. Michael. Forced Michael under. He hesitates, because in this lifetime, that’s Michael’s role again. To play big brother, teach her how to ride a bike, how to fly a kite, how to swim. It feels wrong somehow, to be sneaking around his back for something as monumental as that. Jonas can’t find it in himself to be resentful of Michael, though. Being the older brother was always his place to begin with. If anything- Michael’s stilted coolness towards him makes sense. Jonas is the interloper, the odd man out once more. 

If he was Michael, he’d scoop her up in his arms, lift her off of her feet in a tight bear hug like he has since she was only knee high. If he was Michael, he’d brush back her aqua blue bangs with the auburn roots just beginning to peek through and quip something poetic off of the cuff about her hair being an echo of the lake without knowing the impact that’d have on her. If he was Michael, they wouldn’t be in the situation in the first place.

But he isn’t Michael, he’s Jonas- and she’s Alex, and in this go around, she’s not quite his step-sister. And he isn’t her brother. That means he doesn’t have to be perfect, not in living memory or immortalized in memorial. He just has to do what he thinks is right. So Jonas scratches his chest idly, with the hand that isn’t nearly singed by the cherry embers of his smoke. “Okay,” he says, and it’s as easy as that.

He stubs out the cigarette lolling between his fingers on the rocky face of the cliff he’s been leaning against. It ashes and smears, leaving a little streak like a reminder that he’s been here- temporary graffiti for the winds and rain to scour away, though he folds the still too warm end into his pocket. There’s a reason why all of his jackets have tiny burns and melted edges, but he’s not about to be _that_ jerk who chucks cigarette butts and broken beer bottles into the local marina.

Leave that to the bastards with the yachts and more than enough money to drown out the sobering reminder of their impact on local wild life, to forget that humans are a part of that delicate web too. Where one decision envelops the rest, sets off a catastrophic chain of events from which there is no divining rhyme or reason or rhythm, only riding it out for as long as you can. Treading water to keep your head afloat above it. 

When he looks up at Alex again, he just nods- he understands what it’s like, to be caught up in the running threads of this life and the next and another, and about a thousand different subtle variations on the same theme: _escape is possible?_

So he throws an arm over her shoulders, friendly- like Ren might as the two stagger down main street laughing hysterically over some crappy action flick running at the local movie theatre for the third time this summer, more an excuse to shovel overpriced popcorn and gummy worms into their mouths than real entertainment, washing it down with soda and well worn conversation topics that are as comforting as the red jacket Alex throws on even when the summer heat is sweltering. Normalcy in the face of anything but. Jonas is grateful that Ren is present in her life in the capacity that he is. In both of theirs.

“Let’s do this,” he says, and the words ring oddly hollow in his mouth. His chest aches, as she smiles up at him- tremulous, but trusting, and Jonas thinks that this isn’t the first time that he’s said those words, but that it’s definitely the first time that he’s done this. The loops are over- even though everyone walked around on tenterhooks, too afraid to commit to the future when it all seemed so uncertain: the first night out, first week, first month: and now, here, the first year looming overhead like the last insurmountable anniversary. Maybe they’ll be able to find some closure, some peace when that date finally rolls over.

There’s no going back. There’s only the here and now- only the salt spray that bludgeons even his dulled sense of smell, mouth ashen and smoky still, that she hides her face from by burrowing against him like- like a small animal, a baby kitten maybe, one he had plucked off of the streets back before juvie, nursed back to health with dribbles of milk and lovingly smashed up wet food, and learned to love again through loving something else. After his mom died, his heart felt like ground beef, or pulpy chuck, maybe- all mashed up and masticated, run through the grinder twice over. It’s still sore, still tender- but it’s been healing. They’ve all been healing.

And as if on stage cue, his chest twinges, the stab smothered in a coughing fit, as Alex sniffles, and he can’t tell if she’s crying or he’s crying or if they both are, and neither will admit it- but he turns his head to the side and pretends that it’s the light rain spattering down. Alex doesn’t question him. There are some things that rest in between the two, implicitly understood. At least- that’s what he’d like to think.

The surface of the lake churns, roiling over with wavelets and riptides. Little dimples and indents are left behind by the rain, like the pattering of unseen children, jumping in puddles with bright red boots and yellow rain slickers. He’s seen the pictures of Alex and Michael in matching outfits lining the walls of their home, her bright grin searing. Michael always has his arm around Alex in those photographs, except for when she’s particularly tiny: a snuffling little infant with her eyes closed and tightly swaddled until she’s little more than a wriggling cocoon with a sleepy little face poking out of the pink blankets, Michael looking overwhelmed and proud in the same measure at being trusted to hold his baby sister for the camera. 

Jonas can’t stand watching the slow progression of time: from Alex’s first day of kindergarten to Michael’s highschool graduation, how utterly inseparable they are, Michael-and-Alex, Alex-and-Michael. Still, he can’t bring himself from looking- like a high speed trainwreck. It makes sense, when it’s put into perspective like that: it makes sense as to why she ran the gamut tens-hundreds-thousands of times to try to do the impossible, to bring her brother back from the dead. And if he knows Alex, if he knows anything about that girl- it’s that when she puts her mind to something, she can do everything and anything she’s ever wanted, no matter how many tries or how much effort she has to pour into doing so. Michael stands as a living testimony to that. 

Alex dry swallows. Her eyebrows furrow, knitting together, as she tries to figure out what to do next- paralyzed by indecision by the sandy shores of the water, little wavelets lapping at them, flipflops squashing down temporary imprints into the wet earth. Jonas thinks that she looks a hell of a lot like Michael does, when she’s got the tip of her tongue barely poking out from between her teeth and face all scrunched up in something close to a cousin of a scowl like that.

“Gotta screw your courage to the stickin’ place, right?” He asks, trying to break the tension- and to his relief, it does. She nods, a sharp little jerky motion, and then kicks off her flipflops. They’re bright pink, and the water almost carries them away. Jonas bends down quickly, grabs them by the straps and flicks them over his shoulder, back in the vague direction of where their jackets and his mother’s wedding ring on a necklace sit, bundled safely away from the surf. Alex startles a little at that, but when he takes off his, she does the same, tossing them casually backwards. That tears a smile from him. 

“Let’s do this,” Alex says, and even if her voice catches in her throat a little when a clump of seaweed is washed up onto the shore - he can see it in her face, the momentary terror of tendrils like hair, like a mop of warm brown with the life drained out of a sickly grey face, the dullness of eyes like stones lining the shoreline left to dry out between roaring tides - she steels herself again. Jonas feels that same twinge in his chest, he thinks it might be right under his sternum- as she mirrors his word choice, and they come as naturally to her as if they were her own. Her shoulders are squared, and for a moment, as the wind whips tendrils of her hair into her face- Jonas thinks that he can see the girl who lead their friends out of the mouth of hell on nothing more than sheer determination and grit. 

It’s a terrible day to go swimming. At the same time, with the skies overcast gray and sprinkling down, little tepid spatters of rain rather than a steady drizzle, it doesn’t feel like swimming. It’s a far cry from the gorgeous azure summer day that Michael drowned on- and maybe that’s why she’s able to follow him deeper out without breaking down. He walks backwards, blindly into the water, and his hands are carefully holding hers, leading her deeper. Just until the water settles a little over her hips. He keeps his voice soft, as soft as it can be, anyways- the rasp of smoke ravaged lungs still roughening the edges of it. “You okay?” 

Alex nods, opens her eyes- which he hadn’t realized she’d had squeezed shut. It hits him like a hammer to the side of the head- the vicarious feeling of being a passenger in your own body, helplessly raging against the red light: sobbing mutely as his own fingertips, stained by nicotine, pry open her- Alex’s, another Alex’s, maybe this one’s eyes, even as she tried to clamp them shut against the Sunken’s influence. She couldn’t stand to look the beast in the eyes. He almost loses his balance, stance shifting slightly. They both try to pretend like it was just the waves’ rocking that caught him off guard.

Sweat runs down her temple. “Yeah. I’m good,” she responds, though she doesn’t sound like it. He gives her the time to readjust, her eyes roving over the surface of the water: like quicksilver, between the lightning and the gloomily dark bottom of rounded out pebbles and slabs of slate. It’s a little uncomfortable to be standing on them barefoot, the edges of the rocks and the corners of the bigger chunks digging into the soles of her feet, and Alex stands up on tippy toe to try to alleviate it. Jonas can’t help but be endeared by how even when she’s trying to be tall, she’s still shorter than he is. When Alex turns back up to look at him, he knows that they’re ready to continue onwards.

He holds her up at first. Jonas has never taught anyone how to swim before- so he’s not sure what to do. She’s sort of sprawled out on her stomach, splashing messily, cutting jags through the water’s surface. She punches and kicks like a drunk boxer, movements choppy. His hands hover underneath her stomach, as he follows her awkward crawl forwards, ready to- push her upwards, maybe? Her hair’s getting her in the eyes. Given their height difference, the water isn’t so deep on him. “Hang on, Alex-” he says, and she almost panics, the whites of her eyes stark as she whips her head over to stare, and he _almost_ forgets where his hands are and tries to raise them up in supplication. 

Jonas remembers himself, though, and after a little awkward moving and rearranging of limbs, she’s koala bear clinging to him. Her legs are cinched around his waist, arms thrown over his shoulders, and he’s sort of hunched over because he’s supporting both of their weight and Alex hadn’t thought to bring along a swimming suit, so there’s the issue of her t-shirt and shorts billowing out like some Regency era dress and weighing her down too. She’s this close to choking him out with the strength of her grip. 

“Your hair,” he explains, moving to take the black hair tie off of her wrist. “It’s in your eyes.” She doesn’t say anything, only looks at him expectantly, the _uh, I knew that, dumbass_ clearly writ across her face. “Let me fix it,” he says, and he’s smoothing back her hair and tying it up into a little ponytail, and then swirling that around to cobble a messy bun. It’s not the greatest looking hairdo in the world, but she seems to appreciate it. He tucks the loose strands of it behind her ears clumsily, fingers a little numb with the cold.

Weirdly, the motions are familiar- even though Jonas, as far as he knows, has no reason to have practice with it. But he remembers it anyways, can see his own hands being coaxed through the act, the squared off nails nibbled down a little where he chews on only his index finger, the sleek pull of hair - is it cyan, or is it brown, he can’t clearly tell - through. Maybe not this him then, but another him. 

He remembers Alex’s hands adjusting the tightness of the hair tie afterwards, and they have to be hers, because although the complexion could be Michael’s, hers are so much smaller, small enough that when he- Jonas, not Michael, hauled her up over difficult ledges and squarely cut in ‘steps’ in the natural landscape of Edward’s Island, he felt like he was handling something delicate and fragile and entirely too tiny to be entrusted with him. 

Jonas wonders if this is how Michael felt when he was first handed that snuffly pink baby bundle. 

Though, in the end of it- it was more like he was entrusted to Alex, him and everyone else in their friend group that had voyaged straight into the gates of hell. And she kept them safe, didn’t she? Everyone’s here. So it’s only fair that he returns the favour, Jonas thinks, as he stares down at Alex like he’s on the precipice of something he can’t quite return from.

“You’re all good to go,” he says, and she nods. The moment’s broken, and they go back to kicking and paddling around. More than once Alex splashes water up his nose, and he snarks about brain eating amoebas in warm waters. Zombified. Sticks his arms out and everything, tottering this way and that. Jonas doesn’t roll his eyes back, and they both are grateful for it. 

Alex rolls her eyes in response to his antics, smacks the top of the water again- and it dissolves, momentarily, into a water fight: sweeping arms and frantic giggling. She’s so caught up in trying to drench him in the bone chilling water that she’s lost her fear of treading water on her own. Jonas points it out, cheering, one fist punched upwards as if to punctuate the air at it. 

The day stretches on. It isn’t perfect, but Alex is eventually passably confident with a front crawl. She’d insisted, because the little print outs crumpled in the bottom of her bag from the internet proclaimed it the fastest. Jonas doesn’t push her on her rationale behind choosing it, only helps her get to the point where she can kick her way over to him across the length of a pool. Eventually, she’s exhausted herself, and she lets him drag her back most of the way without snarking. 

Jonas remembers the last time that he held her like this, Alex falling into an uneasy sleep on his chest after the Sunken’s possession knocked the wind out of her: literally, wrenched upwards into the sky and slammed down hard, hard enough that in the days after the island they’d found that she’d cracked a rib on what Michael recalled as a particularly reckless mountaineering accident. She’d wanted to hear his heartbeat, have that steady pulse cradled right up against her, desperate for any sign of the living.

By the time that the sun is setting, dying red embers bleeding across the sky in long trails, they’re both chilled to the marrow of their bones. They slog through the last few feet of water, resistance heavier than it seemed earlier on: thoroughly wet. Water runs down in streams from Alex’s outfit, and she snorts when Jonas throws her shoes at her when he’s raced across the sand to grab his own. Michael would have put them on the ground at her feet and helped her put them on, crouched down and kneeling in the wet sand, leaving behind marks that the ocean would wash away. He always acts like she’s still in kindergarten, a snot nosed, scruffy kneed kid. Alex slips them on herself.

Jonas does however, gallantly drape his jacket overtop of her. She huddles underneath the weight of it, grinning madly up at him. He holds Alex’s red jacket carefully away from himself, so as not to soak it. “Good?” He asks, and she nods. “Cool. C’mon then, it’s a long walk back, and I’m not going to be the one who’s a mosquito buffet- sis.” 

Alex looks at him strangely for a moment, head tilted to the side as the moniker slips out unbidden, and Jonas is about to say something before she shakes her head and laughs, racing down the sidewalk. “We’ll see who’s bug food, bro!” She yells over her shoulder. He’s quick to follow, flip flops slapping ridiculously against the pavement. The cracked yellow streetlights cast long amber shadows behind them, like afterimages. He runs a little faster in a futile attempt to outstrip them.

The ring dangling from the chain thumps against Jonas’ chest as he runs up the driveway. Bright white quartz decoratively scattered in the border of the lawn and the asphalt crunch underneath his feet. Michael is leaning over the railing of the porch, staring off into the distance. If he was Jonas, Alex thinks, he’d have a menthol cigarette slouched in between his fingertips. Instead, he’s got his cellphone cradled in between his shoulder and his ear, arms crossed as he speaks. He looks irritated, talking heatedly into the end of the line- and she stops a little short as Jonas barrels ahead. He clutches the front of his shirt- still damp with saltwater, wheezing a little. “Hey, man.” 

“Alex!” Michael brushes Jonas off, rushing down the steps to her side. “You _walked_ home all wet? You’re going to get sick!” He frowns, hands going to her shoulders, and it’s then he realizes she’s wearing Jonas’ jacket. “You could have at least put it on properly,” he chides, although at this point he’s more concerned with taking it off, a little soggy with wicked out water. 

“Come, let’s get you all warmed up. And- Jonas,” he says, taking Alex’s jacket from his hands, - for a moment, Jonas almost madly doesn’t let go, fingers curled around the fabric, until Michael pulls it out of his hands in one seamless movement - “thanks. You can come in if you want, towel off before you leave.” It’s polite, nothing more. It’s Michael taking over again, being the big brother that he always was. Jonas wavers for a moment. He considers turning heel and going home, slouching through the darkening streets like some moody lead in a detective film. But then he looks at Alex, and she’s smiling up at Michael like he is the sun, and it feels like a vicegrip around his heart. She looks over at him, noticing his staring, and that same smile is directed his way, and his mind is made up.

“Yeah, I’ll come in. Be like those possums you’ve been having trouble with, ol’ Mikey boy. Hell of a time to evict yours truly.” He coughs, the sound coming from deep in his chest, at the same time that he makes a pair of finger guns. Jonas turns his mouth towards his shoulder, although Michael still looks faintly disgusted. Jonas tries to brush it off, pale cheeks aflame with colour he’d blame on the cold, or the running through Camena. Either way.

“You know I’ll always be around,” he says. It’s meant to needle Michael at first glance- but when he looks at Alex, and Alex looks at him- he knows she understands what he means. She knows who it was really for.


End file.
